Yet another ghoulish rehash of Diana’s death
Paul Burrell used to be butler to Diana, Princess of Wales. He doesn’t like to mention it, of course. But sometimes a film crew comes along and he just finds himself – yet again – spilling details of her personal life.
Up he popped in Diana: Her Last
Summer (Channel 5), to remind us of his central place in the Princess’s life. The times she confided in him. The times she treated him like a trusted friend. Burrell has told these stories so many times, because they are his only currency, that he has now reached a point where he plays bits of the story for laughs. At one stage he recalled sneaking heart surgeon Hasnat Khan into Kensington Palace for clandestine evenings with the Princess. “I’d take him in the back entrance,” he said, before a comic pause for the camera.
This documentary, the first of three to look back at her life, featured all the usual suspects. There is obviously a market for this kind of thing, and nothing intrinsically wrong with looking back at a famous figure whose death brought the nation to a halt. It was an extraordinary time, and she was an extraordinary woman. There will also be people out there who are too young to remember these events, meaning this footage will be new to them even if it was painfully familiar to the rest of us.
The programme was made by ITN and made use of old news footage alongside the usual talking heads, who included Jennie “She told me that when we were together at the Palace” Bond. It laid things out in tabloid terms, which was fine because this was Channel 5, not Radio 3.
But the clock counting down the days to her death was ghoulish, and the frequent shots of the mangled Mercedes were unnecessary. There were too many bad takes from Burrell to list here, but “I still curse her to this day for going all that way by herself ” was a lowlight, along with his belief that “death seemed to haunt her towards the end of her life” and his feigned surprise at seeing the Prince of Wales shaken by his former wife’s death. The person who emerged from this with the most credit was Khan, a man who really did play an important part in the Princess’s life, and who has the grace to keep the details private.
Broadcast with little fanfare,
Reported Missing (BBC One) has been one of the BBC’S better documentary series of recent years. Each week it follows a police investigation from the first phone call from a worried friend or relative, to the case conclusion. Sometimes there is a happy ending of sorts, and sometimes there is a tragedy. The reasons for the disappearances are varied and complex.
This opening episode to the third series, however, felt as if it was not giving us the full picture. Mark Smith, a 56-year-old former soldier who ran a veterans’ charity, went missing after posting on Facebook that he wanted to end it all. He suffered from PTSD from his time serving in Northern Ireland and it wasn’t the first time he had gone missing, but something about this one rang alarm bells.
There was plenty here for viewers interested in police procedurals: the methodical trawling of CCTV and phone records, conducting interviews in search of clues. Cheshire Police had two fears – that Smith could harm himself, and that he could harm others. This second scenario was not spelt out explicitly, but when the officers identified Smith on CCTV at Warrington station they eyed his rucksack with suspicion. They learned that he was associated with someone rumoured to have a collection of crossbows, swords and knives.
Then, midway through, the police investigation changed focus. In the months before his disappearance, Smith had been targeted by a Facebook group that accused him of fabricating his military record and questioned the finances of his charity. Could they have been the reasons behind Smith’s mental crisis?
Smith was eventually traced to Aviemore, where he had sought help from a relative, and explained on camera that the pressures of his mental health, his relationship and running the charity had become too much for him. A postscript informed us that he was later arrested on suspicion of theft but no evidence was found, and that the Ministry of Defence had increased his pension after acknowledging that Smith’s PTSD was caused by his military service. All of this warranted more attention, not least the “Walter Mitty hunters” of Facebook, but the documentary-makers chose not to pursue it further.
Diana: Her Last Summer ★★ Reported Missing ★★★